Practical guide to clear thought Ep.3

What do you mean by philosophy making its students "both think and study thought"?

Well, the branch of philosophy known as logic studies and sets out the rules of rational thought, which philosophers are supposed to follow when discussing reality, justice, science etc., the so-called "philosophical" questions. No other discipline has this feature. Generally, the closest they get to logic is "research methods". They do not think about thought itself.

But we think perfectly well without "rules of rational thought".

The only way to convince you there are "rules of rational thought" is to show you the rules -- which will take the rest of this blog course. However, an analogy may help. There are rules in everything we do eg. chess (rules of the game and of competition), poker (many variations), football (American, British, Australian), swimming (strokes, distances, starts, turns), music (instruments, scales, harmony), driving (highway code), even dining (etiquette). This analogy strongly suggests that there are also rules of thought.

Next: If so, why do we think there isn't any?